Sunday, June 17, 2012

What is Varley O'Connor reading?

While traveling to promote my new novel, The Master’s Muse, I read two terrific novels.

Believe me, I was so busy and nervous about the fate of my own book, if these two hadn’t grabbed me and delivered straight through to the end, I would certainly have put them down. Instead, they reminded me of why I read and write; they kept me grounded, entertained, and inspired.

First I read Mudwoman: A Novel, the latest from Joyce Carol Oates. It’s her best since her masterpiece, Blonde, and I highly recommend it. The novel’s riveting portrait of a woman confronting the price she has paid in rising to become the first female president of an American Ivy-league university is as complex and compelling as Dostoevsky and Poe.

We have far too few contemporary novels by and about women that bore deeply into the female psyche and unearth the connections between the dark side of our culture and individual lives.

The protagonist embodies the underbelly of the American dream in her beginnings as the victim of a desperate mother who literally tosses her three-year-old girl into a mudflat and leaves her to die. The child is rescued and adopted by a Quaker family, growing up loved and overachieving and haunted by...[read on]

So begins The Master’s Muse, an exquisite, deeply affecting novel about the true love affair between two artistic legends: George Balanchine, the Russian émigré to America who is widely considered the Shakespeare of dance, and his wife and muse, Tanaquil Le Clercq.

Copenhagen, 1956: Tanaquil Le Clercq, known as Tanny, is a gorgeous, talented, and spirited young ballerina whose dreams are coming true. She is married to the love of her life, George Balanchine— the famous mercurial director of New York City Ballet. She dances the best roles in his newest creations, has been featured in fashion magazines and television dramas, socializes with the country’s most renowned artists and intellectuals, and has become a star around the world. But one fateful evening, only hours after performing, Tanny falls suddenly and gravely ill; she awakens from a feverous sleep to find that she can no longer move her legs.

Tanny is diagnosed with polio and Balanchine quits the ballet to devote himself to caring for his wife. He crafts exercises to help her regain her strength, deepening their partnership and love for each other. But in the ensuing years, after Tanny discovers she will never walk again, their relationship is challenged as she endeavors to create a new identity for herself and George returns to the company, choreographing ballets inspired by the ever-younger, more beautiful and talented dancers. Their marriage is put to the ultimate test as Tanny battles to redefine her dreams and George throws himself into his art.

The Master’s Muse is an evocative imagining of the deep yet complicated love between a smart, beautiful woman and her charismatic, ambitious husband; it is the story of an extraordinary collaboration in art and in life.